Another attack on champions of the battlers

New legislation targets working people, says Jessica Munday

IT seems that whenever the Federal Government is in political trouble it reverts to attacking and demonising unions. Its latest attempt to make life difficult for unions comes in the form of the disingenuously titled legislation, the Registered Organisations (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2017.

This Bill is about anything but integrity. It’s a politically motivated attack on unions which will ultimately hurt all workers if it passes the Parliament.

This legislation will mean members are less likely to volunteer with their unions, allows employers and even ministers to interfere with the running of unions and would impose higher standards and tougher penalties on unions and their officials than the Corporations Act does to big business. This is what we now expect from the Turnbull Government. It’s one rule for the big end of town and another for working people.

Unions are not-for-profit organisations. The average union has 18,000 members and $5.75 million in income. They are run by a mostly unpaid and volunteer committee or board. Comparatively, the executives of the Commonwealth Bank are paid collectively $50 million in a year, they have over 16 million customers and a total income of over $23 billion.

How is it that the laws are harsher for unions than for one of the Big Four banks? Why should it be easier to sack a union leader than a CEO?

The Turnbull Government would never propose these laws for big business.

Do you know who contributes to the running of our unions in Tasmania? Well, in United Voice, the union representing some of the lowest paid workers in the country, it is early childhood educators and cleaners. They do their paid day job and then they volunteer with their union in their own time. They can only dream of being paid like the Commonwealth Bank CEO.

In Tasmania, the branches of our unions are often small. This means Tasmanian unions particularly value the close collaboration and involvement of their members. They are critical to our operation.

Union volunteers are teachers, nurses, firefighters, public servants, electricians, security guards. How is it just that not-for-profit organisations largely run by these volunteers face harsher, more onerous laws, than those of major corporations?

This legislation is also undemocratic and takes away a member’s right to have a say in their leadership and the running of their union. This fundamental right is protected in the International Labour Organisation’s conventions on Freedom of Association which provides for workers to have the right to elect leaders in full freedom, to organise their administration and activities.

There’s an inherent power imbalance in the employee/ employer relationship which is why workers join unions. Unions act with and on behalf of their members. It is members who have the right to tell their union how it should run, not the boss. This is the double standard at play again. It’s more power to corporations and less to working people.

Perhaps it is because unions are campaigning to change the rules for working people so that we can raise wages and stop the crisis of casualisation, which leaves workers without job security, that the Government is so interested in curtailing our influence.

Make no mistake about this. When our Government attacks unions, it ends up hurting all workers. It’s pretty straightforward. Unions operate in a way that benefits everyone, whether a person is a member or not. It is unions, for example, that make the case every year for the minimum wage rise. It is the employer groups, on the other hand, that argue we ask for too much just about every time.

Unions are leading the conversation on inequality and people are listening, as CEOs get pay rises while wages are in free-fall.

In Tasmania, wage growth was at recorded at an all-time low of 1.4 per cent in June.

Meanwhile, employers advocate for penalty rate cuts while corporate profits are up 40 per cent on the year. Inequality hurts us all. Malcolm Turnbull should drop his ideological anti-union agenda which only hurts workers and keeps their wages low. There’s plenty of things he could do to improve the lives of working people – lifting wages, protecting penalty rates, ensuring access to flexible work, focusing on job security. Pick any of those.